Will auto enrollment help in funding employee retirement? The jury is still out, with studies indicating that there’s more to the issue than meets the eye.

Previously we looked at scholarly research from the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College, which found that older workers who were auto enrolled in their retirement plans tended not to contribute as much to the plans as workers who had had to enroll themselves.

But research from Bank of America Merrill Lynch comes down heavily on the other side of the issue, saying that a secondary benefit of auto enrollment is that participants boost their contributions on their own: “In 2014, 46% of automatically enrolled participants voluntarily increased their contribution rates. In 2011, the figure was only 25%,” the research said.